Yawning For Britain

I confess that Shakespeare doesn't normally rock my world. There is a musty dryness I associate with his rhythm and his iambic pentameter or whatever it is; a relic from the many old, smelly, tissue-thin pages of Complete Works I've thumbed through, yawning, for school. I was in a school production of Julius Caesar which swore me off Shakespeare for life (13 years isn't bad as far as lifelong vows made at the age of 12 are concerned, right?), but I know Macbeth and Romeo & Juliet best; I studied both at school, and even taught Macbeth when I was private tutoring. Even so, there is an agedness and a sense of irrelevance that I feel whenever they crop up in thoughts or conversation - we're talking the 16th Century, people, and apart from The Church of England, Sir Francis Drake and The Spanish Armada...(sod's law - now I come to write a list, it's fucking long)...okay okay and Henry VIII, the introduction of pepper and the potato, stuff going on in North America... apart from all that (Ah, Monty Python. How we love thee) what else from the 16th century is at all relevant today?

(I could be snarky about The Church Of England here, but I'm tired, so I won't.)

I love the Midsummer cast.
There's a thrill to the enthusiasm and attitude they give off. A lot of them have only just moved to New York, or are staying here for the college summer break, and most of them are hungry for professional acting.
I say hungry rather than 'looking to get into' or 'would like to work as' because that's what they are. They're hungry for it.
Last night people were swapping professionally taken photographs they'd had taken for auditions, and hints on resume presentation were exchanged. I couldn't help but find it exciting.
You can say what you like about the number of waiters in New York who introduce themselves as actors at parties- it's a longstanding cliche. You can scoff and hazard a guess at the success rate of wannabe theatricals, wonder at how many hopefuls the city swallows whole each year.
It doesn't matter, because the main, huge, staggeringly brilliant thing we're talking about here is living a dream.
The joy in taking a step towards your dreams is contagious, and last night the atmosphere was rife with it.

There is one hell of a lot to be said for being sensible with your life. Life (for the most part at least) is not a rehearsal.

I've written similar words before; we all have dreams, and we treasure them. A lot of us want to do something for which you don't strictly need qualifications - write, act, make films, make music, play sport...but we go ahead and get qualifications anyway - we're sensible, because dreams don't always come true.
But it seems that by the time a lot of people are in a position where their dreams are a possibility (if only they were to reach for them) most are secure in their 'sensible' path; confident, comfortable, safe...and so they carry on living that way to the detriment of their dreams.

Which is what makes this bunch of people different. A year or two of college left or going for auditions left right and centre, they are chasing their dreams, and they're brilliant to be around.

The only reason Shakespeare is making me yawn today is because I stayed out drinking with his actors until 2am last night.